Amid war hysteria, learn from Pope
Ihave become an admirer of Pope Francis. In a world where Muslims are shunned as terrorists, he embraces them, and even washes the feet of one or two. I am happier that he does that to all underdogs, not just Muslims. Pope Francis has said that journalism based on gossip or rumours is a form of “terrorism”.
The Pope made his comments in an address to leaders of Italy’s national journalists’ guild. His context was the refugees milling into Europe.
The Pope said spreading rumours was an example of “terrorism, of how you can kill a person with your tongue… This is even more true for journalists because their voice can reach everyone.” The angst expressed by Pope Francis about loose talk and terrorism should apply to warmongers too.
In India and Pakistan the media comprise a mix of peace-loving journalists on one hand and warmongers on the other. More often than not, the ownership of the news media determines the policy. In India, journalists who oppose jingoism and right-wing prescriptions, gravitate to the Internet. There are more privately owned TV channels in India, and more newspapers than in Pakistan. They multiply the voices of self-styled repositories of nationalism.
Nation-loving journalists on both sides duly fanned the current military spike between India and Pakistan. They ride the myth that national interest requires everyone to become a flag carrier. If it requires the thwarting of azadi, or freedoms there must be something wrong with the national interest.
In wartime Britain, unabashed propaganda machinery was set up and it was called the ministry of information. For two years, between 1941 and 1943, novelist and essayist George Orwell worked for the information ministry as a BBC Talks Producer. He wrote propaganda for broadcast to India, where he was born. His ominous novels about manufacturing consent may have been conceived in that experience. Graham Greene and J.B. Priestly were the other intellectuals working for British propaganda. That model of the information ministry has remained in harness in South Asia in peacetime.
Few have questioned how we can have a ministry of information in a free country unless we acknowledge that information should be regulated. When the outspoken scribe Sherry Rehman became minister of information in Pakistan briefly, I asked her this question but don’t remember getting an answer.
War is supposed to be an expression of the national will, how can that terrorise any good citizen? But we have seen how war mutates into terror for many, the Japanese in America during the war, for example. In India, you should ask the ethnic Chinese citizens of Kolkata how they were terrorised in 1962.
I remember the emotional appeal by Jawaharlal Nehru in his newspaper, the National Herald: “Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might.” The 1962 appeal was carried for years after the war above the masthead of the paper. My mother deposited whatever jewellery she had with the government for its war effort. But Indian Chinese were suspected and treated as traitors. Many left for Singapore and Taiwan.
I count it as a blessing that in 1965 and 1971 we had no television. Company Quarter Master Havildar Abul Hameed became a household name when he destroyed US-loaned Pakistani Patton tanks with hand grenades in the 1965 conflict. He was decorated posthumously.
It didn’t matter if the Hameed story was true, it assured communal harmony, overtly. Dr Asif Kidwai was paralysed from the waist below, but like any good journalist he would tune into Radio Pakistan to know the claim of the other side during the 1965 conflict. A kindly soul scuttled the idiotic move by the police to take him away in his cot. Asif Bhai’s humour was legendary in Lucknow so he could smile through the occasional communal crisis.
The Kargil conflict of 1999 catapulted the role of the media in war zones. The love of the military grew exponentially under the guidance of TV channels. Most chose not to see the link between jingoism and religious fascism. They ignored the slogan from the rubble of Babri Masjid that the next target was Lahore. The anchors seemed so lost in their patriotism the other day they didn’t see the PM turning away from war hysteria. And so they are keeping the drumbeats of war going. Remember the words of Marlon Brando, the insane warmonger of Apocalypse Now. God bless Pope Francis.